dopey wrote:
] im glad you
] got to know him, whoever all you guys are, and whereever you
] are.

Thanks. :) It helps to know more about Brad's life, and the other people that were in it.

I've lost too many friends and associates over the last few years... One thing I've learned though about the grieving process, is that it's hardly ever important *what* the grievers say... What's important is that they reach out and connect with others. Saying *anything*, even if small, is far better than staying silent and hoping for the perfect words.

So, thank you for coming in and joining our meme. You are welcomed.

Elonka :)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us about Brad. Rattle (Nick Levay) is one of the people who maintains this site with me. He put together a collection of graphs which show every week that Brad was on our site, his connections to the rest of the people on the site through our reputation system, and the threads he posted to that week. You might find it interesting. It is linked here:

Brad's Graphs

dopey wrote:
] you guys dont even know half the tragedy of brad's death. part
] of that being it was his first hit of dope in 8 years. and
] part of it was that he had had a death sentence on him once,
] back in the early 90s, when he was a solid user and had come
] so far and done so much with his life since leaving all that
] behind. but i didnt come on here to bring some kind of downer,
] i just wanted to share grief with you guys who seem to have
] actually been his friend. ive known brad since 1984, hung out
] with him every weekend for 8 years in a park where all the
] stoner and punk kids use to hang. i want to share with you a
] poem brad wrote on the back of his algebra homework on the
] 10th of January 1986, which oddly enough, we buried him on the
] 1/10/2004. this poem was passed around a circle of 20 grown up
] park kids while the body was lowered into the grave. this poem
] is so brad(from backthen mind you) that we all began to wail
] and laugh at the same time. im sure the old folks were trippin
] on us, but i wouldnt have changed a thing, other than wishing
] they coulda shared the moment with us...

Thanks for sharing this with us..

] the force of time has no limit. time plays the
] ultimate part in our lives. time affects us at every moment.
] time cannot be stopped except by the end of time. the end of
] time will be when time's force wears thin, in some distant
] generation, and time slows and eventually stops. imagine time
] stopping and all past times converging on the same plane. that
] will be the ultimate end.
] the ultimate end will be like someone turning a
] television set off. it(everything) will all just suck into the
] giant vacuum of the space of nothing. all life & non-life will
] just dissolve, except for one ozzy osbourne record which will
] stand as a memorandum of our race...because...ozzy rules
] eternally...even beyond the ultimate end.

:)

] as we drove out of the cemetery, my best friend(also an
] ex-park kid) put in some black sabbath and we sat back for the
] cold quiet ride back to the city. brad touched alot of folks
] here, but i truly feel like ive lost a brother. im glad you
] got to know him, whoever all you guys are, and whereever you
] are.

I just put on Planet Caravan, and tried to do this in my own way.

I'm glad I got a chance to know him too. I'm glad a piece of him was recorded here, and will never be lost. Even if its only a very small piece.

I was chatting with another friend today, who, though he never knew Brad, has fought his own battles with drugs, and lost friends to them. I asked him what he'd tell a kid who was starting to use drugs, but was in denial about what he was doing. I thought the answer he gave was worth repeating, so here it is:

Here's the story with drugs...
When you first get into them, you have control...
and so you continue...
but eventually you pass a line where they dominate you...
and that line is not something a user can tell....

and Id tell them its fine and dandy what they're doing in one way,
but they will cross a line, and when they do, there will be no
coming back

and they will have no idea where that line is or when they crossed
it....but everyday they do drugs, they get closer to it

And thats fact